New Thoughts (03/09/08-03/20/08)
As so often seems to be the case lately, there is so much that bears considering in this passage! Looking at what’s gathered up for me to pursue in the coming days, it’s hard even to know in which order they ought to be addressed. There’s so much interplay between the subjects, so many ways that one point bears on another, and that latter point in turn bears on the former. So, it seems almost unavoidable that I shall find myself rearranging points as I go, and quite likely repeating points as they apply farther on.
I will say this at the start: those disciples were quite right. This is a difficult teaching. It is difficult in many ways, not just in the illustration which Jesus chooses. We are being forced to consider topics which are difficult to discuss without emotion clouding our willingness to hear what is really said. We are being given lessons on topics which are easily twisted out of their proper sense. I can see, for instance, the seedlings of the Manichean heresy here. They simply moved a little too far to one extreme, taking the message that the flesh profits nothing and misconstruing it to mean that the flesh is outright evil. But, to reach such a conclusion from this text requires that one has not really heard the point Jesus is making. It is to strip away the concern over outward, hypocritical shows of piety that are no more than a thin veneer over a soul committed to its sins, and instead make the message a motivation to pride. Indeed, it turns the whole thing on its head! Jesus points out that prideful display of conspicuous righteousness practiced by men of no real character in order to strip away the pretense and the pride. These twisters of sound doctrine turn it around to become a foundation for a pride just as fully developed and just as deadly to a character of true piety.
Disciples (03/10/08)
The passage opens with mention of Jesus’ disciples, and notes that even among such as they His words were failing to find audience. We, too, who lay earnest claim to the title of Christian declare ourselves to be disciples. But, what does that mean? It’s quite probable that we didn’t know when we signed on. It’s not unthinkable that we haven’t really given it that much thought since. Like so many words we have encountered, we simply look at the surrounding context and assume a meaning that seems about right. Thus, we have this sense that a disciple is like a student, and this is true so far as it goes. To be like a disciple is rather like being a student and within limits, the two strive after the same goal: to learn.
But, there is that about the disciple which far exceeds the efforts of a student. Given that we have such an industrialized approach to education now, there really is nothing in our current day that can provide us with an appropriate model by which to understand this business of discipleship. Apprenticeship comes closest, although even that is somewhat of a dying tradition. Further, this still leaves one far short. An apprentice is there to learn the skills of a master. He is clearly more focused than the average student, who is there to learn, but quite often rather against his own will.
The apprentice is focused. He has a specific goal in mind, and he has determined that this master of his chosen art has skills he would himself acquire. But he stops at acquiring the skills. There is no reason for him to consider the morals and the character of this one he is learning from, except as they bear directly on the trade being learned.
For the disciple, though, the teacher is in some sense the trade he seeks to learn. He is not just there to listen to the lessons. He has seen something in this Teacher, a way of living and of approaching life, that he feels ought to be his own. Here, he says, is someone worth emulating. Here is the sort of character I would have in myself. Here is one who understands what life is all about, and how to live it well. I shall, therefore, set myself to discover his ways, his thoughts, all that makes him such as he is. If only he will allow me that privilege.
This is the disciple’s motivation. It is not just to learn the lessons. It is not just to fill the head with knowledge. That is the student’s business, not the disciple’s. No, the disciple, having gained knowledge, will then do everything in his power to emulate the one who taught him that knowledge. He will put into practice what he has learned, making it a part of his own experience.
Still, there is something that must be added to this picture. Not every teacher is of such a nature as would attract disciples. Not every teacher teaches the things that shape him. Indeed, in most cases today, you’d just as soon they didn’t try, for the things that shape the majority of professional teachers today stray far afield from the morals we ought to be pursuing. There is not much in that lifestyle to justify emulation.
Society as it existed in the time of Jesus, though, was still prone to deep thinking and felt no qualms about connecting deepest philosophical pursuits with matters of God and godliness. It was still an age when the pursuit of sound religion was highly honored. So, the teachers that young men sought out to show them how to live were those who had concerned themselves with learning how to live. They were teachers whose primary interest was in learning what it really means to be righteous and how one might achieve such a thing.
Well, then! These disciples out in the Galilean countryside had come across the one Teacher who really had the full answer. He had the full answer, and He was living it out before their eyes. They could see by His own example what it meant to live a life of true righteousness. So, those whose interest was in obtaining to such true righteousness in themselves would attach themselves to this One to learn. Theirs would be more than a clinical interest. They were the hungry and thirsty. They wanted nothing less than to absorb everything they could of this Man’s experience, of His ways. Whatever He could tell them about how He was what He was, they wanted to know. Whatever they could gather from seeing Him go about His life, they would gather. All of this would become a matter of their own practice. They would do their best to think as He thought, do as He did, live as He lived.
Thayer’s Lexicon speaks of this relationship as one of ‘close ethical intimacy’. That really does seem to be the defining characteristic. Apart from that, you are left but a student. Apart from that, though you may obey the teacher’s lessons, you remain untouched by it all. It has not changed who you are, just how you act. And, until you have entered into that close ethical intimacy, it shall never be more than an act. The things that Jesus teaches are things that we cannot learn by rote. We cannot learn them by memorizing His words. They must be learned by putting them into practice, by making them a part of our personal experience. The disciple cannot just sit back and listen. He cannot simply make notes and file them away. There is no test that he will take after which he can set aside what he has learned. No! With everything he has, he will seek to emulate the ways of his teacher.
If that teacher is worthy of such emulation, nothing less would do. If he is not, then he is not worth attaching oneself to in this sort of relationship. Enough to learn his tricks of trade. The teacher that attracts disciples must have something more to offer. He must be clearly evident as a moral force, an ethical giant. He must be manifestly consistent in living the things he teaches. He must be the clear witness to the truth of his own teachings. This is what the disciples found in Jesus. This is what the disciple still finds in Jesus today. Here is the One, the only One, who has not only discovered the true ways of righteousness, but He has walked them. He has walked them consistently and without fail. My, how I’d like to be like Him! The things He has done seem impossible. I cannot imagine doing them myself. Yet, I see that He has done it, and having done it, He shows me that it can be done. Here, then, is One I must learn from or die.
This is exactly the message that Peter delivers when asked if he’s giving up. Where else could we go? In You we have the only Teacher that knows the Truth and lives the Truth. You speak life. You speak the only righteousness that can reconcile a man to God. What other teacher would we turn to? If we step aside, now, we are giving up on life itself. No, Jesus. The message is hard, the example You set us impossibly difficult, but we must continue. We must learn Your ways or we perish.
Jesus, I have to confess that as I look at the impossibility of the example You provide, it is tempting to forget about even trying. It is so easy, Lord, to recognize the Truth that I cannot do this thing and therefore not be bothered with it at all. But, that is, I know, missing the point. You have said that apart from You I can do nothing whatsoever – certainly nothing of value in Your own sight. But, You have also made plain to me that when I am with You, when I abide in You and You in me, all things are made possible, even the impossibility of my own obedience to the way of life I see in You.
Lord, I know I have failed to pursue Your ways as I should. I know that. I would that it were in me to tell You that I truly repented, yet even there, I know I am powerless without You. I would be saying empty words. Yes, Lord, I am sorry, but that sorrow cannot promise that I shall now turn aside and follow You more completely. Would that it could. But, that is not in the power of human sorrow, and I know it. So, I can but lay myself upon Your mercy. I see the need to change, but I know the need of Your presence, Your will and Your working within me to make that change. So, Lord, I cry out to You to change this heart of mine, and make it, as David said, ever true to Yours.
Jesus, allow me to take my eyes off of the impossibility of obedience and look instead to the example You set. Let me see in You not my own futility, but the hope – the sure hope – of knowing that as You have done it, even in this weak flesh, so I can rest assured that it can be done. Let me rest in the hope – equally sure – that as it is You who does this work in me, I shall know Your righteousness as my own not only in some legal sense, but as my real experience. Oh! That it could be so now. Yet, I know that You have decreed times and seasons. I know that You have determined that we shall see that future only dimly until the day we stand before You. But, Lord, how I long for that day, for that clarity and completeness! How I long for the time when righteousness is no longer a struggle, but simply a matter of innate character.
So, my God, my King, I can say no more than to thank You, for I know that You are indeed faithful to complete this work in me. My Lord, may you find me willing and may You empower me to be able to comply with that work You are doing. Even so, Lord, let it be done!
Giving Up (03/11/08)
As I look at the disciples dealing with this challenge, I see a model provided for facing our own challenges. Here, they had just been given a lesson that was very difficult to understand, and even when understood, very difficult to accept. Remember that it is not sufficient for these disciples to simply accept the truth of His words. It’s not sufficient for them to understand what He’s getting at, even to be able to explain it to others. They’re going to have to live it. Even more, they’re going to have to live it in such a manner as makes it a reflection of their own inward state. A mere show of compliance to these lessons will get them nowhere and they know it.
That’s what His whole message has been about, isn’t it? We must eat Him, drink Him, make His word and His example the very stuff of life to us. We must be so filled with Him that He is truly our all in all. If you are what you eat, as the saying goes, then here before you is the best meal you could ever hope to partake in. But, of course, if you are what you eat, then your actions must manifest that inward state. Our actions, much like our words, cannot help but expose our inward reality. However much we may seek to put a good face on things, we will slip. In our weakest of moments, our real character will come shining through.
So, as we look in on the disciples that were part of this crowd, we hear them wondering amongst themselves. Who can ever expect to comply with what He’s asking now? Difficult? That’s not the word for what He’s teaching today. Impossible! That’s the only way to describe it. He wants us to be like Him. Frankly, we wanted that, too, when we first joined up with Him. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here today. But, what He’s asking of us now, well! That’s so completely beyond us. Who here could ever lay claim to having attained to what He has just required?
To eat Him, to drink Him; to make Him so thoroughly a part of who I am; that remains the call of the Christian today. We sing our songs to Him. “You are the air I breathe”, we tell Him. But, we don’t really believe it’s more than a pretty bit of imagery. “In Him we live and move and have our being”, we sing out. But, we don’t really believe it. No, we’re as convinced as the next guy that it’s all about us. We’re as certain as the most worldly of men around us that we must do for ourselves or it won’t get done.
Eat Jesus? Drink Jesus? Live Jesus day in and day out? Truly, it’s never been tried, has it? Not in our experience, anyway. No, we are pretty well trained to keep Jesus in His proper setting. Lord, I love You, but not here at work, OK? Lord, I need You, I know, but right now, I’m sitting here having a drink, and I’d really prefer it if I could come see You a bit later. Maybe tomorrow, OK? Lord, I know, I know. I’m supposed to be merciful just like You. But, you know, right now I’m really, really angry, and I just need to vent. If I don’t let this moron know how much he’s ticked me off, if I try to keep it inside, to stuff it, well everybody tells me how much damage that would do to me. You wouldn’t want that, would You? Alright, then. Let me tell this guy off, get it out of my system. Then, when we meet at Church later, I’ll be much better fit to maintain propriety.
But, if we have eaten and drunk our Lord, if we have allowed His character to be so fully woven with our own, there’s no place for this, is there? Is it any wonder that Paul cried out his own anguish? Woe is me! Who can save me from this pitiful, woefully inadequate fleshly life? I know what I should be doing. I want to do the things I should. Yet, I find that inevitably I wind up doing exactly the things I shouldn’t. God, I can’t do this, and I can’t stand that I can’t do this. Where is help? What am I to do? What hope of heaven is there for me, if I can’t even take six steps of righteousness in a row on my own? Well, thanks be to God that in Christ Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, our Redeemer, He has made the impossible way for us!
But, you know what? Before He comes and reminds us of the Perfect answer He has provided, He wants us to face ourselves. He requires us to face ourselves. “Does this make you want to give up?” That’s the way the Good News Translation puts this. “Does this cause you to stumble? Is it a trap for you?” Oh, dear! For many, it turns out, the answer was yes. For many, this was the breaking point. I’m sorry, Jesus. I wanted to be like You, sure. But, not that much like You. I mean, sure, it would have been nice to have a place in Your kingdom and all, but I’m just not up to making the sorts of sacrifices You keep making. Yeah, I’m afraid this does make me want to give up. Guess I’ll just go back to my old life.
Here we are at the crisis point. Jesus has just told us we’re going to have to get real. It’s not going to be enough to play the Christian on Sundays. It’s not going to be enough to put on our holy garb when we’re hanging with the brothers. It’s going to be a day in, day out, when you rise, when you sleep, every moment and every breath commitment to live like Him. Either that, or it’s as good as finished now. You might as well go. This is the point where continuing in lukewarm, half-hearted belief is no longer sufficient. Either you truly believe, and you will truly commit heart and soul to that One you’ve believed in, or you truly haven’t believed, and you will stop pretending you did.
It occurs to me that this is really what’s going on throughout the book of Job. See, Satan, the devil, is convinced that nobody really believes. He’s convinced that nobody really trusts God that thoroughly. So, he insists on putting poor Job to the test. See, God? He doesn’t love You, he loves the stuff. Stop showering him with your riches and he’ll leave you soon enough. It’s not a character thing with him, it’s a material thing. The truly amazing thing as that Job stood faithful through all that Satan tried against him. Take his health, his family, his business, his livelihood, his very means for survival; take it all, and still he would cling to God. Still he would declare that God is good.
It’s hard to imagine until you’ve been through something that nears that epic scale. It’s hard to imagine that life where it seems like every day you can hear that terrible adversary asking, “what about now? You ready to give up, now?” And, it seems like when that fails, he just comes back with something harder, takes another swipe at you, and then asks again, “OK. What about now?”
Well, I’ll tell you what: if God is truly Jehovah Jireh, if He is really my Provider, the Giver of every good and perfect gift, the One who is working all things together for my good, then no, I’m not ready to give up! This is what makes that whole doctrine of Providence so critical to our faith! It is that providence of God, which cares for, oversees, and indeed directs every moment of every day of our lives, and it is our full, unwavering, unconquerable trust in the goodness of His providential care that allows us to stand, no matter what may come against us!
If the manna was a test of the people’s real trust in this God they called their Provider, then the demand and the claim that Jesus has just made is an even greater test. Will you trust in Him to be everything you need? If He calls you to serve and you see no possible way to do as He has called you to do, will you do it anyway? Is He your Provider or not? If He calls you to set aside everything that gives you any vaguest sense of security, are you prepared to do so? Is He your Provider or not?
I’m telling you, all of this is wrapped up in what He has been saying, and those who found it the most difficult to listen to are probably the ones who heard it the most clearly. It’s not that they didn’t understand. It’s not that they couldn’t figure out that He was speaking in symbolic imagery, not in any literal sense asking them to come nibble on His arms. It’s that they were beginning to grasp the full extent of commitment He was calling for, and having assessed their own capacity to comply, they found themselves wanting and saw no possible hope of it ever being any different.
So, they abandoned whatever progress they may have made and withdrew from His class. I have to say that the word ‘withdrew’ just doesn’t do justice to what John wrote here. More literally, it would come across as they returned into the things which were behind. Yes, Jesus has shown them a new way. They had experienced some of the benefit of this new way. They had managed, one supposes, to set aside some of those sins that had beset them. Not all. No, not by a long shot. But, some. They could have found signs of progress if their eyes were but open to it. Instead, they were focused on the impossible job ahead. So, rather than continue in slow progress toward the goal, the tossed it all; went back to their chains.
One reads of those slaves who, when given their emancipation, were more inclined to stay put. Now, this analogy cannot hold up completely, but it provides a valuable comparison nonetheless. After all, many of those who chose to remain with the master they had served so long did so because that master treated them well. Don’t expect that from the master of sin’s plantation! There were others who had simply grown up in that setting, in that life. They could not imagine it being any other way. To set aside all that was familiar was just asking too much. It was a scary world out there. The place they were at may not have been ideal, but at least it was familiar. That sort more closely describes this situation, I think.
Yet, was there another group? Was there a group of those who at first relished their freedom; the chance to show what they were really capable of all along? Let us suppose there was. Some of these, freed of their chains, gladly bounded off to their freedom. But, they found that with freedom came responsibility. They were truly free: free to fail or succeed, free to find a way to feed themselves or starve to death. Guess what? It’s not all milk and honey out there beyond the plantation. There’s fighting that has to be done. The vineyards won’t grow grapes without some attention. The garden won’t give up its fruits if nobody’s tending to the weeds. There won’t be sheep for eating if the wolves have been given free access to the flocks. Some, facing all the challenges of self-sufficiency, would come to the conclusion that life had been a lot easier back when it had all those chains attached. Some, reaching this conclusion, would doubtless return to the master’s mansion, hat in hand, begging to be restored to their old place.
That’s nothing new, is it? Isn’t that Israel’s cry in the desert? “Why’d you bring us out here to die, Moses? Sure, our labors in Egypt were hard and they were killing off our kids. But, at least we could eat!” And don’t you ever think that we’re above just such foolishness! Not this side of heaven, certainly. The most devoted to faith have been shown perfectly capable of falling, of returning into the things they had left behind. Think about it. The twelve stand firm in this trial, but look for them between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Where are they? They’ve gone back to their former lives. Well, this road’s a dead end. Might as well get back to the boats and start earning a living again.
To reach that point is not, clearly, an unforgivable sin. I’m not entirely clear that it’s a sin at all. The sin lies in the response to finding oneself in that place. As I was just pointing out, the twelve – or the eleven that remained – gave up. They reached a point where they could see no possible way of continuing, and no point even were it possible. So, they walked away, just as the crowds did here. The difference is that they came back. When once God gave them to know that there was indeed a way and that He had already done it, they were right back in position, and ready to go forward. They may have returned to a past they once knew, but they did not throw away what they had gained when they did that. They held to the growth they had attained to even in that brief slippage, so they were ready to pick up where they left off when Jesus called them back into service. And, looking at what we can see of their lives thereafter, they grew by leaps and bounds from that point onward.
Indeed, that faith which Peter expresses here when Jesus asks if they’re leaving with everybody else remains steadfast. In some way, it remains steadfast even as Peter is denying his Lord, there in Jerusalem. In some way, even in that time of deepest remorse, the faith that knew, knew with absolute, incorruptible certainty that Jesus was truly the Holy One, the Son of the living God remained perfectly steadfast. Like Peter, when we face those times when we feel like giving up – when we face those times when we feel we have given up – our faith remains steadfast. Like Peter, we shall discover that the faith that was once for all imparted to us will rise up once more at the least whispering call of Him Who gave us that faith.
Do you see? Even that faith which we call our own is not of our own making! It was given as a gift by our Father in heaven. It was given to us freely by His will, His choice. It has been made our possession because He gave it to us, yet it’s power lies in Him, not us. And, He is faithful. He shall indeed complete the work He has begun in us. That promise leaves no room for doubt, so hold fast in the storm!
Faith, Free will and Choice (03/12/08-03/15/08)
Having spoken to those who have given up, Jesus makes a declaration that many today find utterly impossible to reconcile with their sense of God’s nature. It is not the beginning of His declaration that grates on them, but the conclusion. Indeed, it seems like great swaths of the Church must be completely ignoring His conclusion to hold to their own. So; He looks around Him at these disciples who can no longer maintain discipline, and He says quite plainly, “Some of you don’t believe.” Here is the Rabbi of all rabbis, addressing, as the CJB likes to say, His talmidim, His disciples, His followers. If we wanted to bring this forward to the modern culture, we might say He was talking to His hangers-on, His groupies, His posse. These are the ones that profess that He is such a wonderful teacher and all, and yet, He says, “Some of you do not trust.”
That’s the way the CJB has it, and that particular interpretation really strikes at the core of the issue. It’s not that you don’t know. It’s not that you don’t understand. It’s that knowing and understanding, you don’t trust what you have understood. You haven’t committed to it. You get it, but you’re not going to let that determine who you are and how you behave. Sadly, apart from that commitment, all that you have learned means less than nothing.
Well, that’s fine. As I said, though, this part of the message will cause no problem for the believer who believes that somehow it was his own choice to come to Jesus. There is that whole school of thought that feels it impossible to declare man an agent of free will unless it was up to him to choose faith in Christ. As they reason their way through their position on the matter, they will point out (and I have read one such argument even in the last week) that it would be terribly unjust of God to hold a man guilty for a choice he could not help but make. In other words, as they would view it, if man did not willingly and, I suppose, knowingly choose to rebel against righteousness, then surely God cannot hold him accountable for that breech. The corollary of this, I am not sure they even think about, but perhaps they do. That corollary would be that unless a man willingly and knowingly chose to pursue God’s righteousness, God would be equally unjust and incapable of rewarding that one.
OK. I see that train of thought, and yes, it feels comfortable. The problem I have is that it flies in the face of so much of what the Bible teaches. Yet, the only defense aside from opinion that I ever seem to see thrown up is that verse which says God desires that all men be saved. I have addressed that in other lessons on this chapter, so I won’t go back to it here. But, I will say that there is a reason I have been over it in this chapter. That reason is that Jesus repeatedly makes statements that demand a different understanding of how this whole salvation thing works. We hit another one here.
Just look at what He says to this crowd. “Among you there are some who do not believe. […] For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Here, I follow the NRSV, which is rather a rarity for me. But, let me offer a few more translations of that final clause, because it is so critical to our understanding. “People cannot come to me unless the Father provides the way.” That’s how God’s Word takes the passage. Or, how about this, which is about as blunt as one could ask for: “You get to me only as a gift from the Father.” That was The Message, which I grant is almost pure paraphrasing, and which I honestly find myself disagreeing with as often as not. Yet, here, Mr. Peterson seems to have been spot on.
Well, then, am I merely choosing to follow those interpretations that suit me. Well, I suppose in one sense, yes, of course I am. Why would I follow what I disagree with? But, I don’t follow blindly. I follow because these interpretations accord not only with the meaning of the words Jesus has said here, but with the whole flow of His preaching. As I noted in earlier studies on this particular dissertation from Jesus, the greater part of those infamous five points of Calvinism are right there in the words of the Master. But, this matter of election is at the forefront. With election, we cannot help but come upon predestination, and these two – which cannot be separated – stand opposed to the popular conceptions of free will and free choice.
I must recognize that this idea of granting can have a number of shades of meaning. It can range from permitting to enduing with power, and many other possibilities are there besides. But, when I take the first clause, “Nobody can”, that has to shape how I hear the second. See, when Jesus says that nobody can, He is declaring us utterly powerless to do so. However much we might like to think that it was our own natural desire and inclination to seek Him out, He has just told us the very concept is impossible. You can’t. There is nothing in you, o fallen man, by which you would even think to try.
That is the whole point that Martin Luther came to grips with in his discussion of free will. So long as we remained in sin’s bonds, so long as God had not yet endued us with the power of seeing our true condition, and had not yet revealed to our vision that there was an alternative, we were only capable of choosing to continue our sinful ways, because it was all we knew and all we could see. Were we choosing freely? Yes, and yet at the same time no. We were not throwing up resistance against the choice we made, certainly, so we were free in our choice. Yet, inasmuch as we never knew there was an option, no, we were not choosing freely; any more than an election where one candidate’s name is not allowed on the ballot is a free and fair election.
It required God to make the first move. Thus does Paul tell us that even faith was not of our own doing, but a gift granted us by God. He had first to come and awaken faith in us, to open our eyes to the reality of His creation and our sinfulness. Only then could it occur to us to choose a better way, and even then, that choice would have been impossible if not for His power working upon us both to will and to work (Php 2:13).
Now, I have to say that this is not just Martin Luther talking. It’s not even just Paul talking. It’s Jesus as well. Neither is it only in this current passage that we hear Him talk this way. I will point out that this is not the first time He’s said it in this setting. Indeed, what we have before us is His explanation for why He had already made this point. “Some of you don’t believe. That’s why I have been telling you that it’s impossible for it to be otherwise unless the Father grants you the power.” In other words, unless He chooses you!
He is pointing back to what He has already said in the course of His message. Most immediately, He is back at what He was saying in verse 44. There, He is saying much the same, of course. “No one can come to Me, unless the Father (who sent Me) draws or impels him.” Again, it is more than just inclination that we are talking about here, it’s the power and ability. That power continues to lie in the hands of the Father, not the man. But, continue into the next verse there, because there is such a wonderful counterpoint given to this. “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.”
Now, hearing that, it seems to me we must recognize an equal and opposite impossibility has just been declared. Just as it is impossible for a man to choose of his own accord to come to this Christ unless God empowers him, impels him to do so; even so, we discover that where God has so empowered and impelled the man, it is impossible that he will fail to come. This is the foundation upon which Paul has constructed what is commonly called the golden chain. “Whom He foreknew, He predestined. Whom He predestined, He called. Whom He called, He justified. Whom He justified, He glorified” (Ro 8:29-30).
Let’s be clear. It’s not, as the Arminian posits it, that God knew we would choose Him in the end. No, it’s that He had determined before ever we were born, before we were even conceived in the womb, that this was a part of the purpose of our creation. We were born to this! That’s rather the point of predestination. It was our destiny to come to salvation. We were, as Paul would say, vessels chosen for glory. Then He called us. Other translations would put this in more theologically precise terms, and say He elected us. This is the point Jesus is addressing. God so moves upon the one He created for this moment that this one is now impelled to the Redeemer. He will doubtless feel it as a drawing. That is, after all, our perception of the moment. Suddenly, we find Jesus irresistible. In our still-fallen nature, we give ourselves the credit for this, thinking our emotions have just awoken to a particularly powerful love, but after all, not all that different from when we fell in love with others; just stronger.
What we fail to consider is where that sudden sense of being drawn came from. It’s not from our own spirit, though, and that’s the whole point Jesus is making. No, you were drawn because the Father impelled. He has done the work. This is precisely why we come to the declaration that faith is a gift. We can lay no claim to having had a hand in it. We did nothing to deserve. We did nothing to make it happen. It was done quite apart from anything on our part that might have somehow attracted God’s attention.
Now, I mentioned that this latter half, the idea that where God impels, resistance has become futile, or rather, impossible. To fully appreciate the joy of this news, though, we need to go a bit further back into the message. Hear this, and let your heart leap with the joy of hearing! “All that the Father gives Me shall [necessarily] come to Me, and I will certainly not cast him out” (v37) Not thrilled yet? Wait it gets better! “Of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (v39). Do you hear this? Your salvation has come because God more or less shoved it down your throat, and you should be thankful that He did. It’s like medicine that we may struggle against because the taste is horrid, or the side-effects bothersome. Yet, apart from that medicine, our condition must surely be fatal. Mercy, in that case, does not lie in allowing us our freedom to chose as we will, for we will almost inevitably choose poorly. Mercy lies in insisting that the smart option, the path of life and health, is opted for, whether we like it or not.
At this point, I would briefly consider another aspect of this matter of granting. To us, as I have noted has been granted the faculty, power and virtue to pursue the Christ as our Savior, Redeemer and beloved Husband. At one and the same time, it can be said that we have been granted to Him, given into His care as His own beloved possession! That is wonderful, indeed! For, we know that we ourselves tend to care more fully for what is our own than for what belongs to another. It probably ought not to be that way, but it is. Where we have a personal stake in the matter, we will be more attentive. Well, my friend, we are created in the image of God. Surely, where He has a personal stake in the matter, we might also expect He’ll be more attentive. Given that, if we are in this sense granted to Christ as His own possession, has He not just been given a greater stake in our outcome? Will He not tend even more carefully to our well-being?
Listen, the Shepherd cares for His sheep with the utmost attention. The sheep of another, perhaps not so much. This is not to say that He takes no care for those others, for that is clearly not the case. No, though they are not His sheep, still He provides for their food and their shelter. Still, He allows His sun to shine upon them, His rains to water their crops. Still, He will preserve them from any number of dangers in the course of their days.
This only serves to magnify the great care He takes over His own! We have, after all, been given to Him by His beloved Father. We have been given to Him to be His bride, and there is nothing in all the world that a man shall cherish more than his bride. There is no other in all the world that he will defend more ardently against all attacks and all accusations. She has, after all, been entrusted into his care. That, my friends, is our position. We have been entrusted into the care of Jesus. His Father and ours has entrusted us to Him. There is so much love wrapped about that transaction! All that love serves to strengthen and seal the bonds of trust that have attached us to one another.
It was the love of the Father for His Son that sent Him looking for a bride. It was the love of the Father for His Son that led Him to create us as vessels elected to glory, fashioned from the very start to be a fit bride to His beloved Son. Having fashioned us to this end, His love for us is also very real, and that love leads Him to impel us toward that One we were fashioned for. My, my! What powerful significance this brings to the foundational message on marriage!
The man said, “Here, then, is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, taken out of me.” Because of this truth, a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife. They become one flesh (Ge 2:23-24). That is the reality of married life. It is not just an ideal. It is the reality. Oh, I grant that there are many marriages that fall far short of this in spirit, where division and divisiveness seem the rule. But, even then, there truly is a one flesh aspect to that which God has bound together in matrimonial union.
But, elevate this to the spiritual marriage, the epitome of marriage, the fulfillment of all that marriage typifies! Place the second Adam in the setting of the first, and hear Him saying of you, “Here is bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh! Here is what was taken out of me.” That is how Jesus, my bridegroom thinks of me! He looks at me, and sees something that was taken out of Himself. Better yet, He sees in me that thing which was taken out now restored to Him. Do we not find in ourselves that the thing we have lost and then recovered we will care for that much more? There was that saying that arose in the sixties; that if you love someone, you must let them go. If they return to you, then you know they love you, too. That is, however foolish it may be as advice, of an accord with what I am saying here. What we recover, what is restored to us, is by that restoration made more precious in our estimation. We will watch over it so much more closely, now, lest we lose it again.
Now, understand that Jesus never lost you in the first place, so in that regard the image doesn’t hold up. But, there is still that sense in which we have been away from Him. We have all known those times in our lives when we were consciously or unconsciously distancing ourselves from Him. But, the Father loves us! Though He had every reason to be offended by our foolishness, instead His love wraps around us and impels us to go seek out our Beloved, and so we do go to Him. We go in the confidence that He shall not reject us as we have so long rejected Him. That confidence is ours because His own Father has told us that it is so.
I have not, I think, explored this theme sufficiently. We are come into this one flesh relationship with our own Savior and Redeemer! We are come into a one flesh relationship with God! Can you even fathom the incredible honor done us in this? Is it not already far more than you can think or imagine, that God’s love for us is that great? I am proposing this thought, and even so, I find it skating beyond the edges of what I can truly fathom.
We have not, of course, come into the fulfillment of that wedded bliss. We are not yet entered fully into the one-flesh aspect of this marriage. Yet, bearing in mind the course of marriage in the culture Jesus walked in, we are just as fully bound in covenant relationship as if we had already entered fully in. We are just as completely and solely His as if the wedding day had already come and gone. We are betrothed, pledged to Him in faithfulness. More critically for our own well-being, He is equally – more than equally – pledged to us in faithfulness. He, who could say with all honesty and truthfulness, “Father, I have not lost even one from among those You gave Me.” That includes you, if you are among the elect. That includes me.
The Father, out of love for both Son and myself, has impelled me to His Son’s side to discover love. He has entrusted me to His Son for my own wellbeing, and there can be no safer place. His Son’s love for me pours over me, pours through me, and I cannot help but respond in kind! His Son has looked upon me and found in me something of Himself! This is marvelous beyond description! He has looked at me, coming to Him as bedraggled as I did, and said to Himself, “This is what’s been missing in Me!” We talk about that God-shaped hole in our spirit that only Christ can fill. What we seem to have missed in all this is that there is likewise a me-shaped hole in Christ waiting for me to come and fill it. And we shall become one flesh!
Somehow, this all seems of a piece with what Jesus has been saying in this chapter. “The Father sent Me, and I live because of Him” (Jn 6:57). Could we not say, “I live for Him”? Even so, “He who eats Me, shall live because of [or for] Me.” Go further back. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him” (Jn 6:56). What if one were to turn that around? “He who abides in Me, and I in him has eaten My flesh and drunk My blood.” One flesh, each as it were absorbed into the other, so completely intermingled in nature as to become indistinguishable. Consumed with Him and consumed by Him. I could dwell on this thought for hours, I think, and not really exhaust it!
However, I started this section on matters of free will and choice, and there is something that must be fully recognized before I finish. When it comes to choosing, we must be absolutely clear that the choice was not our own, not at root. Oh, we chose freely, once we had been freed to make a choice. Yet, always there at the foundation must be heard these words of our Husband: “You didn’t choose Me. I chose you” (Jn 15:16). Had it not been so, we would never have found it in ourselves to choose Him back. Is it a mystery, this business of predestination and free will? I don’t think so. Not really. We need only look at the negative examples that abound in the story of redemption. From Cain on down, those who chose evil, however much they may have been predestined to that end, however much God may have hardened their hearts, were still doing as they chose to do. They went willingly unto their own destruction. Just so, we who have been predestined unto election, though subject to the unopposable will of God in the matter, are yet willing participants in the choice. We choose freely to go where His love impels us.
How can we be free when impelled? Or, how can we be free when hardened to our own detriment? I think it not so much a matter of the fact of our choices, for if God has willed it, surely those choices are inevitable. The freedom lies in our motivation, our sense of ourselves in what we choose. The freedom is found in the fact that our desires are fully aligned with what we are doing.
Yes! I think this may be it! Consider the difference between, say, the spirit we see in Nebuchadnezzar and the spirit we see in Paul. Both find themselves acting in clear opposition to the law of God. Both find themselves in sin. However, as Nebuchadnezzar lashes out at the people of God, as he lifts himself up as an idol for his nation, he glories in his own insolence. He thrills to stand in the way of God’s plan of redemption. For all that, consider Paul while he was still known to the world as Saul. He, too, was perfectly pleased with himself as he went about seeking to destroy the work Christ had begun. He, too, was perfectly happy to go forth on a murderous hunt amongst his own brethren in pursuit of this end. But, then, listen to him after he has been impelled to the side of his Beloved. It is now that he begins to cry out that he cannot seem to stop himself from doing the things he no longer wants to be doing.
“I don’t understand this, Lord,” he cries. “I am not doing what I would like to be doing, but instead, I find myself doing things I utterly abhor!” (Ro 7:15). “Who will set me free? I’m dying here!” (Ro 7:24). Oh, but thanks be to God, my Husband, my Shepherd is still watching over me! Thanks be to God that I have been entrusted to the only One who could look my Father in the eyes and say, “I’ve never lost a one!” (Ro 7:25).
That is the power of free will. It is not that our free will manages to control our actions, for we are still in this fallen flesh. It is not even that our free will manages to control our choices, for we must conclude that we choose are actions. The faculties of the soul necessarily motivate the acts of the flesh. The will that we must consider is something greater. The soul, the mind, is still subject to the same weakness of the flesh as the body. But, the spirit is renewed within us. The spirit chooses God and chooses Him freely, even though this body continues to choose otherwise.
How can we honestly think we have freely chosen God in this more commonly understood sense when we can’t even manage to choose righteousness in any consistent way? When we have seen so much evidence in ourselves that we can’t even choose to set our sins aside, how can we think we are somehow able to choose God’s offer of salvation? Who are we kidding? We, who cannot overpower the least temptation in ourselves are somehow capable of utterly severing every bond that holds us back from heaven? I don’t think so! No, the word of our Bridegroom stand. “You didn’t choose Me. I chose you.”
Lord God, thank You for this message! No, I shall not call it a revelation, for this is nothing that need change the course of redemptive history. But, what You have explained to me today, this is wonderful indeed! These are things to contemplate at length, Father, and I pray You would empower this feeble mind to do just that. I find myself looking forward, at this point, to what You may choose to say to me as I shower! That is, after all, the place You always seem to find me listening.
There remains a more difficult side to this matter of God’s choosing. It’s hard enough for us to accept that we didn’t choose Him, unless our own experience has made it impossible not to accept that truth. What really irks people, though, is the idea that if God chooses some, He of necessity must not choose others. That just seems so harsh, and we have difficulty with the God of love being harsh. Yet, if we just watch Jesus at work, we will see God being harsh. He, the perfect image of the Father, the one who could tell His disciples, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). He is the same one who is saying to this crowd, “not all of you. Some don’t believe because the Father has not given them that gift.” He is the same one who tells another group, “My words are not for all of you, only some” (Jn 13:18). How shall this be determined, Jesus? Is it because of their unbelief? I mean, we could try and draw that connection in the current situation. But, no, Jesus gives another reason for it. “I know whom I have chosen.”
It should be fairly obvious, I suppose. Of course, if one has chosen he knows his choice. But, is that really true? For long years we chose sin constantly and yet, never really saw that this was what we were choosing. Only now, eyes wide open in the Spirit, do we really recognize just how thoroughly undeserving of His love we were. Yet, He loves us! This is the thing that so amazed John, and it does seem to more or less color the whole of his gospel. Over and over the point is made, and almost always he records it from the lips of Jesus, God Incarnate. “You can’t come to Me unless the Father makes you.” “He gives Me those He has chosen. They are a gift to Me and I shall not lose even one, for they are precious in My sight, these gifts from My Father.” “I know whom I have chosen, and these are the ones I am speaking to. The rest cannot understand My words.”
Let it be understood that His words are no less effective for their lack of understanding. No, Jesus, the Living Word, was sent forth from the throne room to accomplish the full purpose of God. By His own confession, through the prophet Isaiah, we know with certainty that God’s Word does not return to Him without having accomplished all His will (Isa 55:11). Further, we know that His Word has returned to Him and is now seated at His right hand. In other words, God’s will for the salvation of mankind has been accomplished; accomplished in full! Clearly, that salvation has not been all-inclusive. Therefore, any idea that God’s unopposable will is that all men should be saved must be seen as invalid. If God’s will, fully accomplished in His Son the Word, is that all men shall be saved, then His will has failed of being accomplished, His Son has lied about Him in claiming that not all men were chosen to believe, and the whole system of Christian faith must come crashing down like a house of cards.
The simple fact of the matter is that both the words of Jesus and the experience of our own lives make clear that there is this issue of election, that there is a choosing. That choosing has not lessened the efficacy of the Atonement. Not at all! The Atonement is of sufficient power to save every man, woman and child who ever has or ever will live on the face of the earth. The power is not the issue. The issue is that God has determined that on balance, it shall not be this way. For all of His essential characteristics to be satisfied – both the justice and the love, both the mercy and the wrath – there must be those who shall remain in their sin. While our weak, post-modern flesh may find it hard to swallow, the God we serve, if we truly serve the God Who Is, has said that the punishment of the unelect shall redound to His glory every bit as much as the salvation of the elect. We can be offended by this as much as we please, but if we are going to serve the God Who Is, we must accept that He Is Who He says He Is, not some concoction of our own choosing.
That choice can only consist in idolatry. If we have chosen God, we have – almost by definition – chosen a god other than God, for He says, “You didn’t choose Me. I chose you!” Given that, is it not foolishness and idolatry to claim otherwise? Is your conception of free will and personal choice really worth calling God a liar?
[03/15/08] I had thought myself done with this topic yesterday, but I am reminded this morning of one aspect I have not yet taken the time to explore. This has to do with the last thing we hear Jesus saying to His disciples on this occasion. “Didn’t I choose you twelve Myself? Even so, one of you is a devil!” (v70). There are several things about this that deserve attention. The first, and most connected to the subject at hand is that Jesus clearly identifies who does the choosing, here. “I chose you!” There is an implicit corollary in this. “You didn’t choose Me.” Further, it appears to me that He is not delivering this so much as a lesson covering new ground with His disciples as He is commenting on something they already knew to be true.
Were this outright teaching, we might expect another of those verily, verily moments. “I tell you with utmost assurance that I chose you twelve. Whatever you may have thought, you didn’t choose Me.” But, instead, He puts the question in such a form as makes clear that He knows they know the answer already. “Didn’t I choose you twelve Myself?” Any one of those twelve, reflecting on his own experience, would have to nod his agreement at this. Yes, it was clearly Jesus who chose. “Matthew Levi, follow Me.” After all, what had he been doing at the time? Was he praying? Was he manifesting a history of chasing after various rabbis in search of enlightenment? No! He was sitting at his desk in the tax-collector’s office, a man deemed the lowest of the low by his countrymen. There was no evidence of a seeker here; only of one sought.
This is one problem with the Arminian perspective. Like so much of modern liberal thought, it flies in the face of experience. We must deny our own experience to accept the validity of their theories. Like Matthew, I cannot look at my own salvation story and find any evidence to support the idea that I was in control, actively seeking God and finally coming upon Him. The whole series of events was so clearly something that I more or less stumbled into in spite of myself. The whole series of events was so clearly not under my control, and not tailored, as it were, to my tastes. There was simply the irresistible call of Spirit to spirit, that something which impelled me to Christ, that left this cynical, sarcastic unbeliever with no choice but to believe, and to fall in love with Jesus. Admittedly, there’s still plenty of cynicism and sarcasm left, but the flavor’s changed. In God I trust. In those who insist they have a direct line as they preach their nonsense for fun and profit? Not so much.
So, we have this clear statement from Jesus, and we more or less naturally assume that the disciples were all there nodding their assent to the question. Oh, yes. We’re pretty clear on that, Rabbi. Yes, we can remember it well, and it’s very plain to us that You chose us. Wonderful it has been, too, if difficult! Like Peter just told You, who else could we turn to now? There’s just no competition!
But, then there’s that stinger at the end: “one of you is a devil!” What? Wait a minute, there, Jesus! One of us is a what? Do you know what really shocks me about this? There is absolutely no notice of how these twelve reacted to that news! John! What was going on there? How could you just skip by that? Well, of course, we understand that the disciples were not the point. Jesus is the point. Still, it seems so improbable that he should think back on this scene so vividly, end his recollections on that note and skip right past the reaction to point out who Jesus was talking about.
So, OK. To us, that closer is so obvious we might wonder why John bothered. Yes, sir. Of course it was Judas. Who else would He have meant? At the time he was writing, though, and to those he was targeting with his writing, the unfolding of this story might not have been quite so clear. Had they already read the other gospels? Perhaps. I suppose that unless he were addressing some group that had never heard of this Jesus or of Christianity proper, we might be able to think that way. But, the nature of John’s gospel makes me think it was not written so much for the unbeliever as for those already in the church. By his other writings, we can also determine his concern for defending the Truth of the gospel against the many Gnostic heresies that arose in his time. So, this might be his reason for making the point that Jesus was talking about Judas and nobody else.
Still, there remains the immediate reaction that he does not set before our eyes. It is really our own fault that we fail to see it anyway. It is only because we tend to give the material such light reading that it slides by us without forcing us to wonder. How would you receive that news? Just picture it for a minute. There you are, sitting in the Wednesday night service – you know: the one that only the real believers bother to attend – and the message comes from the pulpit: Yes, you are the chosen ones, the cream of the crop, my hand-picked assembly. And yet, one of you is a devil, an unbeliever with no hope of salvation. Are you really going to just let that pass right by? No way! At a minimum, you’re going to be looking around you to see who looks guilty. If there’s a shred of conscience in you, you’re going to be pretty concerned about making a quick self-assessment. Like the scene we have of the twelve later, when they heard the news of betrayal, we would be looking to the man in the pulpit and asking, “it’s not me is it?”
I have not doubt that just such a scene was playing out among the twelve even now, whether John chooses to share it with us or not. C’mon Jesus! Didn’t we just tell You that we are certain that You truly are the Messiah? Didn’t we just finish saying that there’s no way we’re quitting Your ministry? How can You turn around and say this? Is this some sort of test? Are You trying to push us just a little bit harder to see if we’ll quit? Well, we’re not quitting! Consider that test passed, Master.
There is one more thing about this statement that I think is of extreme doctrinal importance for us. We have heard by Jesus’ own words that the choice is His to make. Election lies in His hands, as the authorized representative of the Father, Who made the choice of giving us to His Son. There is something else that must be seen in this, though: There is choosing and then there is choosing.
Clearly, Jesus makes the choice His own. “I chose you.” But, at some level we are clearly not talking about election here. If this were a matter of election unto salvation, there could be no “and yet” hung on that statement. There could only be, “I shall not lose a one”. The “and yet” implies that what we are discussing has more to do with church membership, as it were, than with heavenly citizenship. And that is a point we need to recognize. Traditionally, this distinction has been understood as the visible church versus the invisible church. We lose sight of that distinction at our own risk.
Here’s the point I see Jesus making. Mere membership in the church body, sitting in on His lectures and being associated with His ministry isn’t enough. It’s not going to be enough to be known as a Christian, or to call yourself a Christian. All of that will prove utterly worthless unless there’s something behind it, something stronger. Unless there is the real matter of election to back up the claims to being a Christian, unless there is a real matter of election that underlies your being in that church, then you remain a child of the devil.
This, too, accords with personal experience, at least for me. I sat in the church for a year or more as a total unbeliever. I was there to keep peace in my new household. The woman I had wed would not have had me without this appearance of righteousness. If that was the bride price, so be it! Why, I’d even go up to the altar and fall over, since that seemed to be the thing to do. Whatever appearances were necessary to keep that woman happy, I was willing. After all, it was only an hour out of my week. It cost me almost nothing. Of course, it also bought me almost nothing. There may have been quiet in my home life as a result, but there was nothing of eternal value to be had by that fakery.
These days, looking around the church I am attached to, I can lose sight of that experience. It would be very easy to simply assume that everybody who’s making the right moves is in the right place. On the other hand, it would also be exceedingly easy to err on the other extreme and assume that they’re all a bunch of poseurs. In either case, our judgment would only be partially accurate. The whole point of the invisible church in the midst of the visible is that we cannot know with any certainty where any other truly stands with God. For oneself, I would maintain, the certainty of salvation can and should be known. But, for any other? No, we are not such as can judge the heart of the man. We are as likely to mistakenly think a true believer to be an unbeliever because his actions don’t accord with our opinions as we are to mistakenly deem a son of the devil to be a true believer because his actions do accord with our opinions.
We seem to have this view that if he’s got the moves he must have the salvation. And, nothing could be further from the Truth. That’s a portion of why we are called to exhort and admonish one another. That is why we are called to do what we can to correct the sin we see in our brother, to try and draw him back to right standing with God. That is why we are called to check ourselves constantly, and see to our own standing. The problem we have is that our focus continually trends toward the visible. In other words, in spite of our knowing that it is the spirit and the heart that matters most, we can’t see those. So, we do as the Pharisees did before us, and come up with our list of visible dos and don’ts that have only limited connection to anything in God’s Law.
Depending on the societal norms around us, we may or may not include temperate use of wine, or beer, or even stronger drink on our list. We may or may not include dancing, or going to the movies, or dating, or any number of other things. We will doubtless be able to roll out a fine Scriptural basis for whatever our particular perspective might be. But, the reality remains that we are simply stitching together our list of visible requirements. Do these things and avoid those others and we shall judge you to be a true part of the family. Do otherwise, and we shall be forced to deem you suspect.
However much this may be our natural tendency, if flies in the face of what Jesus is teaching here! You are all counted as My closest associates, the select ones. And, it’s even true that I chose you, as you well know. But, that doesn’t change the facts about you: one of you, in spite of having every advantage the others are experiencing, remains a devil bent on destroying My work. You won’t spot him by any outward deviance from your own practices. He looks every bit as much a committed follower as any other of you. But, he’s not. You see, the flesh profits nothing. The outward appearances mean nothing. It is the Spirit that gives life. It is the spirit that reflects the true state of the man, whether he has entered into the life of a child of God or remains in the death of a child of the devil. This returns us to the core theme of all that Jesus has been saying to this crowd.
Spirit and Flesh (03/16/08-03/17/08)
The clear thrust of the message Jesus delivers on this occasion is the ascendancy of the spirit over the physical. The physical manifestation of the bread in the desert didn’t really matter all that much. It was the spiritual faith and obedience of the Israelites that was of concern. The meal that some of these folks had experienced yesterday didn’t really matter. What mattered was the implications that lay in the means by which that meal was provided. We might extend this point and say that all the healings and deliverances that were happening around Jesus didn’t really matter all that much, either, except as they gave evidence to the Son of God come to save man. Frankly, as I have often noted, unless the spiritual healing, the spiritual deliverance, and the spiritual rebirth accompanied that healing that the eyes could see, then the physical healing was of no great benefit.
However, before I turn my attention fully to this matter of spirit and flesh, for it must be considered at length and with great care, I do want to consider the things we are shown about our Savior in this closing portion of Chapter 6. I noted in my preparatory notes for this study, that we are being shown Jesus in His fullest humanity in this scene. While He never really loses His connection with the fullness of the Godhead which is within Him, what I see played out in this exchange is so expressive of the fullness of the human nature which was also within Him.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems typical that when I read those red-lettered sections of Scripture, I tend to hear it in some sort of detached voice. What do I mean by that? It’s almost of a tone with what one hears in a politician, that approach to matters that indicates a certain superiority without really manifesting an overweening pride in the matter. It’s the way of addressing issues that seeks to indicate that one is above it all, as it were, too concerned about bigger issues to let these small matters upset us in any way. You might think of it as that attempt to appear presidential. I’m sure I’m not expressing this quite the way I should, but hopefully I get the image across. If I were to put it more plainly, it is hard to hear Jesus without that “I am God” accent in mind. In other words, it is hard for us to really consider the Man as a man when we know He is God.
Try, though. Try reading through His exchange with the twelve with Jesus the Man in sight, rather than God. I find an interesting dynamic comes out of the discussion with this modified perspective. Start from this point: Jesus is not stupid. He knows the lesson He has just been teaching is difficult. He meant it to be. He may even have meant it to have a winnowing effect. Still, as a teacher, to have so much of the class walk out has got to hurt. He has challenged His disciples, those who have claimed a commitment to living as He lives, thinking as He thinks, and the upshot has been that many of these committed ones have just walked out on Him. They have decided that what discipleship in His camp demands is too much for them.
His class has just walked out on Him, right there in the lecture hall. If we allow Jesus any humanity at all, isn’t it pretty much necessary to recognize that this hurts? Of course He’s hurt to see this, even though we grant that He knew who believed and who didn’t. In fact, even if we were to grant that He knew what would come of delivering this message, I think we’d have to grant the hurt He’s feeling. From our own experience, we know well enough that being forewarned of disappointment doesn’t really eliminate the disappointment when it comes.
Given that, I find I must hear that disappointment and sorrow in His voice when He turns to the twelve. Let me say, as an aside, that how one hears this question must surely depend on whether one thinks Jesus knew exactly what would happen, or if we limit that knowledge to who believed and who didn’t. Personally, I am inclined to think His knowledge was limited to the hearts of those in the crowd. I say this because the testimony of the Scriptures is that He had humbled Himself, set aside the inherent powers of His Godhead, so as to fully sympathize with the weakness of the flesh. So, when He turns to speak to the twelve, I would expect we might hear just a hint of trepidation in His voice.
“What about you? Are you going to give up, too?” Now, I grant that He phrases that in a way that indicates the answer He expects, or at least hopes to hear. It’s almost like one of those wife to husband questions where she has made clear the answer she’s hoping to hear, and the husband knows better than to offer any other, even if truthfulness would demand it. It’s one of those questions that we might expect to hear a “please say you’re not” appended to. In short, it is a question that has been invested with a lot of hope, but hope in its more human sense, not in that sense of certainty that is vested in our hope of heaven.
So much hangs in the balance. So much depends on how these twelve will answer that question. When Peter answers – and what a powerful answer it is! – the sense of relief for Jesus is almost palpable, though it goes unmentioned. Where else would we go, Jesus? Yeah, Your message today is hard to take, but we know Your words (and only Yours) are life. We have been with You long enough to be confident in knowing You really are the Messiah of God. So, however harsh the message, we’re still committed. We’re still hanging on and following You.
Phew! Hear this last part from Jesus with that sense of relief flooding His emotions. That relief sounds almost like pride, and in a sense it is. “Yes! Didn’t I choose you twelve Myself? And, didn’t I choose well!” His pride is not so much in His prowess, but in the way this vindicates His choices as having been in accord with the Father. It’s not all that far off from the pride and relief we might feel when events prove that we have been listening to His voice and obeying it well. Alright! I’ve been hearing You clearly, then. That’s a relief! I was afraid, for awhile there, that I was just chasing my own desires and fooling myself about Your leading. Now, I see Your lead confirmed. Praise God!
And yet… If we have heard the conversation along these lines, how do we hear this last bit? “And yet one of you is a devil.” Do you suppose the need to include that one in His choices was perhaps a seed of doubt in Him? I can see where it would be. To be in a position of having to include one’s known enemy as one of your closest companions just goes against all common sense, unless it is with a strict eye to keeping an eye on that enemy.
I was reading an account of what transpired in Germany through the years that it remained divided after World War II. There came a time when it was discovered that one of the highest officials in the West German government was actually spying for the Soviets. This was a man with access to the most secret of communications on matters of American and European interests in the Cold War, and he was sending those secrets straight on to the Kremlin. Well, when he was discovered, he was not immediately removed from the scene. He was left in place, and his superior was left to keep an eye on him, feed him misinformation to pass to his Soviet friends, but play-acting in such a way as to keep him from realizing he’d been found out. The enemy remained, in that case, as a close advisor and, by all appearances, still a dear friend. But, the real situation was hardly such.
So, here we have Jesus, knowing that one of his closest companions is an enemy agent, a spy for the devil, if you will. He knows that everything He teaches, everything He shares with these twelve, is being made common knowledge to the one who seeks His destruction. Wouldn’t you question the wisdom of having such a one so close to you? Wouldn’t your natural inclination be to get rid of that one before any more damage is done? Wouldn’t the necessity of keeping him with you tend to foster a certain degree of doubt? In that sense, I think Jesus’ mention of the situation here is of a part with the relief He feels upon hearing Peter’s answer. OK! My choices are sound, even though I’ve got the devil’s own agent here.
In fact, I think that whole answer, by and large, is something Jesus was saying more to Himself than to His companions. Of course, it’s addressed to them, and they clearly heard what He was saying, but it seems to me that He’s really speaking to His own spirit at this point. He’s quieting His own concerns by forcing His emotions to look upon the evidence with the coolness of reason. See, fear? You’re baseless. Everything remains in accord with My Father’s purposes. I have been doing what He wanted, so whatever may come, I need not fear it. Even if all of these will abandon me in the end, I need not fear, for My Father is with Me in all that I do. If He is with Me, who can stand against Me?
Of course, this must necessarily be speculative, yet I don’t think it’s baseless speculation. He came to experience all that we experience, to be tempted in every way as we are tempted. And, He came to triumph over every experience and temptation. Doesn’t such an interpretation of the scene accord with that? Over against that, though, I must recognize what John has said on this matter: Jesus knew from the beginning who did not believe and who would betray Him. The flip side of that is that He therefore must have known from the beginning who did believe and would stand with Him. So, while we hear the humanity in His question, and I still think that reasonable, let us not lose sight of His divine nature in doing so. He was, for this earthly sojourn, a man like unto us in every way, tested as we are in every way. Yet, in Him was vested the fullness of the Godhead, that He might satisfy the Law of God as our federal representative. So, while dealing with the weaknesses of the flesh, He was able to triumph over those weaknesses and in Him we, too, have our triumph. In Him, we are granted to see man as man was intended to be, and thereby we have our goal set.
So, let me now turn more fully to the message that has caused such consternation. For, in looking at that message, I recognize that it continued causing consternation long after both Jesus and His apostles had passed from the scene. Several hundred years later, it was still causing problems. Arguably, it is still causing problems in His Church today. It was indeed a difficult statement, and the question remains as to who can listen to it and really understand. I hope that I may include myself in that number.
It is clear that Jesus has handed us the key to understanding this whole message in what He says to these people in closing: “The Spirit gives life. The flesh profits nothing. What I have been teaching you is spirit and life” (v63). But, what was the lock this key was given us to open? It came back in verse 27. “Don’t put so much effort into things that are going to perish in the end, no matter what you do. Shift your focus! Labor for the food of eternal life! That’s what the Son of Man has come to give you. That is why Father God sent Him. That is why He has stamped Him by His own seal, marking Him out as the legitimate Representative of the kingdom of God.”
So, Jesus, are you telling us to blow off all the labors of this life, and just sit back contemplating the life to come? Have You just declared to us the ultimate welfare state? God forbid that we should think so! And yet, many have sought to support just such a conclusion by the Scriptures. Even before the Bible had been completed, the issue arose. Paul had to address that amongst those he had brought into the kingdom. So caught up in the news of Jesus’ return, they figured there was no point working. If He’s coming back any moment, why waste our time on earthly things at all? Better to just dwell in contemplation of His return. Food will come. Clothes will come. We’ll just sit here and wait. Let those with less devotion see to our needs. Now, I’m sure that last thought was never allowed to reach their conscious thoughts, certainly never expressed in such terms; yet it was the natural terminus of their thinking all the same.
Paul would not suffer such thinking to continue amongst his children! No! That’s not holiness you’re practicing! It’s laziness. Go back to the Proverbs and see how God views the sluggard, and don’t think you avoid that label by your pious claims of devotion. No such thing! God commands labor of His children, and how can you think yourselves righteous who refuse to lift a finger in supporting yourselves? That isn’t depending on God’s Providence, that’s presumption.
Move a little further in time, and we come to the Gnostic teachings of the Manicheans. Oh, everything fleshly is evil and must be subdued. The spirit is the only holy thing and we must do everything in our power to be freed of the flesh and its sins. Now, I have little doubt that this form of thinking, as much as it might be found in the church, at any rate, would happily point to this verse in support of their views. “Look,” they might say. “He has told you the flesh profits nothing. It is worthless, even a hindrance in our pursuit of righteousness. If that is so, surely we should be striving with all we can to set aside every matter of the flesh!” So, they would seek to minimize their support of their own bodies, eating and drinking only as it was necessary to continue living at all, and pridefully displaying their capacity for self-deprivation. Why, those who could not do as they were doing just hadn’t progressed as far as they had in this heavenly knowledge. They didn’t have the revelation.
In time, this whole movement was shown up for the deception it was. Yet, such thinking still creeps back into the church today. As with so many heretical views, however forcefully they are refuted in one age, they return again. The devil is not, after all, a terribly creative fellow. Besides, one goes with what works, and mankind is horribly forgetful of its past. So, in our own time, we find believers convinced that any physical malady must be a sign of God’s displeasure. It doesn’t matter that Jesus Himself taught that this connection did not necessarily hold. No! Every sickness must have a spiritual root. Here, too, is the root error of the prosperity message. If God is pleased with us, if He is blessing us, then surely we must have riches and abundance in this life! Anything less just wouldn’t do!
Do you know how many real believers have been caught up in this nonsense and come close to destroying their faith? That destruction comes because faith is no longer looking to the Word, it is looking to rewards. When these non-promises that have everything to do with vain imagination and nothing to do with heaven go unfulfilled, that faith which was laid up in those promises is left in doubt. How could I have trusted You, God? How could You allow this? What have I done, God, to deserve this? I trusted You, I believed You! And You have not come through for me. That’s where it all leads. I’ve watched it happen. And, it is close to impossible to bring about a proper mindset in one who is caught up in this sort of error. There is just too much being taught for profit that says otherwise, and no matter how often their own experience clearly shows that teaching to be wrong, it sounds so good they can’t help themselves.
So, then, what is Jesus teaching here? Well, when I read the God’s Word translation the other day, they tried to put it this way: “Life is spiritual. Your physical existence doesn't contribute to that life.” I have to say, that has completely overshot the bounds! It has not only missed the point, but it has so thoroughly distorted the point as to head it right back into that heretical path once more.
The main point that we have to keep before us is this: The flesh can never work its way into eternal life. The New Living Translation has it this way: “The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing.” That comes a bit closer, yet it can still leave us with this sense that we might as well not bother trying. Tempting though that may be to believe, it must be clear to us that this can’t be the point Jesus is making. After all, the entirety of His earthly existence was spent not only trying to fulfill that Law which must be obeyed if we would have eternal life, but succeeding at it.
It is something of a natural reaction of the flesh to react in this way. If it’s all spirit, then flesh is freed of its guilt, right? If the flesh doesn’t matter, let it have its fun. This was exactly the lie that was laid against Paul’s teaching, and it is exactly this lie that he said could not be further from the truth. How could we? He asked. How could we think it acceptable to go on in ways displeasing to God when God Himself has paid such a heavy price for our sins already? How could we, who have been saved, rescued from the grips of sin at the cost of Jesus’ blood ever again consider defiling His wonderful name by persisting in rebellion against Him? It is – or at least it ought to be unthinkable!
John, writing to the Church into which such Gnosticism sought to spread, lays it out in even more certain terms. The one who is truly in Christ, truly possessed of eternal life, cannot possibly continue in habitual sin. Yes, he will slip into sin on occasion, because the flesh remains, and as Jesus has said here, we cannot attain to perfection by human effort.
Some, even today, will try to shift that message slightly by insisting that what Jesus means is that we can’t get their by human effort alone. They will insist that if we were truly possessed of the Holy Spirit, truly abiding in Christ and He in us, then surely we must attain to exactly that perfection. Some will even try to suggest that they have arrived there! Paul would be shocked. He made it clear enough in his own case: I am not saying I have arrived. I am only saying that I strive constantly for that goal. This is the walk of faith while we remain in this world: to train ourselves to this constant striving for the goal, even though the goal is beyond us to attain. Faith knows that though the flesh must fail of this challenge, yet the Spirit works within, and it is He who gives us life. It is He who will present us to Jesus that our transformation might be complete. It is then, when we have seen our husband face to face, as He truly is, that we will find ourselves complete in Him, the one flesh relationship finally fulfilled, and in that fullness we will enter into the presence of our Father.
We have to look over what has been going on here to keep our balance. There have been those who have witnessed one of the most important signs in the course of this ministry of Jesus and have utterly failed of grasping its significance. They have seen impossible amounts of bread and fish provided in the midst of a wasteland and rather than recognizing the hand of God marking out His Son, they have seen a free meal. Prosperity! Look, we don’t have to work anymore. We can just hang out with Jesus and He’ll feed us. That, according to Jesus, is what motivated them to come find Him here. They could care less about matters of eternity. They have no least interest in God’s will or God’s purposes. They aren’t even all that worked up about there being a Messiah to come rescue them, just so long as the food keeps coming.
Israel in the desert. They don’t even notice it, as they recapitulate that forty years of history in a moment. C’mon, Jesus! Our ancestors had manna raining down on them every day. Let’s have us some of that! If You’re so hot, then let’s not stop with one picnic lunch. Either You do this for us every day from here on out, or we can’t be bothered to listen to You.
That’s the setting. That’s the story we have unfolding here. It’s the story of unbelief pretending to faith. It’s the story of the Pharisees with a twist. They laid out the example of looking good – ostentatiously good. See how holy we are! Why we have these holy words tied onto our foreheads and arms. We have these oversize tassels on our robes to remind us that much better to pray. We are so fastidious in our ways that we don’t even dare to be in the company of such lesser lights as you, lest you stain our holiness. That was one aspect of error. These folks were just another aspect. The Pharisees wanted the reputation without the reality. These folks wanted the blessings without the devotion. Everybody, it seemed, wanted a half a god at best. Everybody wanted a god that fit their needs, and that being the case, they wanted a god that didn’t require anything of them beyond what they were willing.
Fleshly acts of piety, Jesus says, can never be enough. You can’t work your way into eternal life. It takes that inward call of the Spirit, the Word of Life sent on a direct connecting flight with our own spirit, sent by the Father at His choosing and as His gift. That alone can bring life to your soul. “These words are Spirit and they are life,” He says. Does He mean, then, that having heard His message, we’re all set? No! He means that if we will get it through our thick heads what He has been trying to teach us, then we will begin to approach God not out of abject fear, but out of irrepressible love. He means that we will have been moved by His teaching from the wasted anxiety of trying to do everything to utmost perfection, lest God smite us for our failures; and we will have been moved into doing what the Spirit moves us to do, doing as God wants done for the shear love of Him, like any loving child enjoys pleasing his or her father.
Who among us doesn’t know the motivation of pleasing others? Now, if that is our sole motivation, we’ve got a problem. But, our tendency is to overreact to that, lest we become ‘man pleasers’. Somehow, we get it into our heads that any sort of accolades from man must mean we are off course. My, what neurotics we become! Why is that? It’s mostly because we still have that flesh hanging around. We know our motives are never quite as pure as we’d like, and we allow ourselves to fall back into the habit of trying to tame the untamable. We go back to trying to look the way we’re sure we ought to look, even if that means making the interior worse. We go back to trusting our flesh rather than His Spirit.
What does Jesus say to all of this? “Come to Me, all you who are heavy-laden.” What was that heavy load, after all, but all this attempt to mask our sins with the practiced piety of legal minutia? “Stop that! Take My yoke upon you instead. For My burden is easy, My yoke is light.” What, Jesus, is so light about it? You call us to take up our cross daily, and You call this a light burden? Yes, indeed! For it is not your backbone and your muscle that shall bear it, but Mine.
Come to Me and I shall give you rest. That’s the burden I lay upon you, to lay down the striving to do what you cannot do and let Me do it in you. My Father has given you this gift of love for Me. He has given you to Me as a gift of His love. He has told you that He Himself is at work in you, giving you a will to pursue righteousness and working in you to persevere in that pursuit. The zeal of our Father, He shall do it! Indeed, My child, though you strive, He has already done it. It is finished! Now, rest in the work He is doing and cease your struggles. No, do not fall into the ways of the sluggard, but don’t let your foolish pride convince you that you must somehow do the impossible. Only believe.
Repentance and Mercy (03/18/08-03/20/08)
It would be quite understandable for somebody reading this passage and seeing the heading for these last comments to wonder what possible connection there was between what they had read and matters of repentance or mercy. After all, He is not speaking about repentance here. This might almost be cause for some surprise, for we know Jesus began with much the same message as John the Baptist spoke, “Repent for the kingdom is at hand.” Of course, Jesus having begun there didn’t stop there. How could He? In Him, the kingdom was no longer at hand; it was here. So, His message built on that foundation. He focused on teaching the people what life in His kingdom was really about. Now, they’d had the lessons in front of them for years, but they had not really understood them, for their teachers were imperfect.
This would be a total aside to both the passage and the topic, but I want to say it anyway. Some look at the ways in which Israel’s teachers got off course and, rather than seeing in this a call to greater dependence on God to keep the message true, they see a reason to avoid teaching certain aspects. They look at how far off course these earlier teachers wandered because they understood in part, and they fear that to pursue those same truths and teach them will only lead the modern church off course as well. While I can respect their concern for the church, and even admit to the propensity for error they see in it; I must yet disagree with the conclusion. The Truth remains the Truth.
The Truth remains the Truth, and we are called to witness to the Truth. The fact that others before us have abused that Truth and twisted into a lie is no reason to avoid teaching the real deal. We ought instead to draw upon the example of Jesus, our Teacher and role-model. Consider His treatment of the Law of Moses. Admittedly, that Law had been twisted far from its intent by those who developed the religious tenets in Israel. As Paul would note later, sin had made the good Law a base from which evil could operate. Why, teaching the Law (at least as it had been taught) had led Israel astray! The conclusion that the mindset I described earlier must reach on realizing this is that they probably ought to avoid teaching the Law. It is too difficult to declare it properly and in full, and the people are too prone to misunderstand and walk into error.
This is not what Jesus did, though. Rather, He insisted on clarifying that what had been taught was wrong, and then propounded the real meaning. Jesus never sheared away from a matter of kingdom Truth because it might not be understood. Just look at what He’s been teaching here! This is hard stuff! This is stuff that even his closest twelve aren’t going to grasp without some help. But, He is that help. He is there to explain what needs to be explained to those who are chosen to hear the explanation.
He is still here today. He has appointed another Counselor to make those necessary explanations to all who are counted among His flock. Every disciple of Christ who has walked the earth is given the benefit of the Holy Spirit to bring them into all truth. Will there be those who still manage to go into error? Oh, I have no doubt that every one of us will wander to this side and that as we seek the path of Truth. We are imperfect beings. But, I also have no doubt that the same Holy Spirit who abides in us will make certain that we correct course before things get out of hand. I have watched it in my own church family time and again. The leadership may wander for a week or two into questionable territory, but my God and theirs proves Himself faithful to bring them back on course.
What, then, shall we say of those who wander into heresy and stay there? I must maintain that these, like Judas, were chosen, but not for salvation. They have tasted the kingdom, it is true. But, they have not been granted to like the taste. They are the ones who do not truly believe because it has not been granted them.
If we were to dedicate to teaching the whole truth, even the hard truths without fear and without fail, would there be those who heard it wrong? Would there be those who were offended by it and would no longer walk with us? Isn’t that exactly what is happening in this passage? Jesus is speaking hard truth. It’s tough to understand, and tough to swallow if understood. Half the crowd has completely misinterpreted His meaning and walked off in disgust. Most of the rest have found the matter too hard to internalize, too hard to put into practice and given up. Do you suppose Jesus didn’t properly assess the impact His words would have on this crowd? I don’t. It seems abundantly clear from the outset that He knew exactly what sort of people He was dealing with, and He was determined to do some weeding.
And that, folks, is where I find mercy in this passage. Admittedly, the way we see Jesus dealing with these people comes across as harsh. The Truth can be that way. There are times, it seems, when the Truth must be that way. Take my own case. There was that period before God really got hold of me. My wife was telling me how much I needed this Jesus thing, and I just couldn’t hear it. What did I need Him for? I was a pretty good guy, after all. I mean, if she thought I was some moral wreck who couldn’t change, what was she doing there with me anyway? No, the Truth delivered soft like that just couldn’t get through. The Gospel delivered soft may get through to some, but it’s only by the grace of God! OK, I know. It’s only by the grace of God no matter how it’s preached, but take my meaning.
The Gospel was meant to be preached in a way that would impel men to Christ. Look at the way Paul delivers it, for here was a man who was impelling men to Christ in droves! Where does he start? He starts by stripping away any possibility of thinking ourselves to be good enough. He strips away every possible excuse we might have and every defense we might think would suffice before God. Only when he has made our desperate straits so clear that we can’t deny it any more does he put the Good News before us. Now that you recognize your doom, now that you can see with clear eyes that there is no hope for you, no way you can get out of this trouble, let me show you Hope. Now that you see no possibility but the death sentence ahead, let me show you Life.
To the modern ear, this is a harsh way to teach the God we know. Oh, God is Love. If we tell people about His wrath, they’ll miss that point. They won’t stick around to hear it. If we teach a God Who is Just, rather than a God Who is Mercy, why, the lost will just stay lost because they don’t need that message. They need to hear about how God loves them, wants to forgive them. Well, tell you what: Every real revival that has been recorded in the history of the Church came about when preachers preached the God Who Is. No holds barred, no holy attribute avoided, no softening of the message. Here is the True God. Here is your True situation. And, here is True Salvation.
When we soften the message in hopes of making it more palatable, we fail to manifest the mercy of God. This is exactly why I see God’s mercy on display in this passage. Is it mercy to allow an unrepentant sinner to think he’s going to be ok because he repeated the words of the sinner’s prayer? Is it mercy to allow an unrepentant sinner to think that having raised his hand in response to an altar call was enough? Is it mercy to let that one baptized at birth think that’s going to carry him through, no matter what he’s done with his adulthood? I don’t think so! Mercy does not consist in allowing the blind to keep walking blindly right into hell! Mercy does not consist in helping the devil to promote a false salvation.
Mercy lies in forcing the sinner to look at the reality of his situation. Mercy requires that those who are in the church but not of it hear the truth about themselves. “Some of you don’t believe. And, to you, I issue a warning: You can’t come to Me unless Father God grants it.” Don’t think you’ve done enough. Don’t fall into complacence thinking that being in the building every Sunday has you covered. It doesn’t. If you don’t believe, you know it.
I have to say that you won’t hear the mercy in this if you hear that declaration from the mouth of Jesus as being the final decision on their situation. It is absolutely true that He has said they can’t possibly be open to receiving His Truth unless the Father grants it. It is absolutely true that He says truly that they don’t believe Him. But, there is nothing in what He says that precludes the possibility that this situation can change. Father God may not have granted them ears to hear in this moment. Does that mean He never will?
Listen, and hear true Mercy! If Jesus had not forced them to confront the situation, they would simply have gone on with their lives, thinking that pursuing what the scribes and Pharisees had been teaching was going to be enough. I feel certain that there were some who heard this message and, though it caused them to walk away, it also caused them to start seeking the Father more earnestly, that He might indeed grant them to come to this Jesus. Yes, there would be those who heard it and just threw in the towel. But, there were some for whom the Mercy of Jesus, manifested in telling them the Truth about themselves, would be a lifesaver!
Where would David have been if God hadn’t sent Nathan to confront him? His eyes had been blinded to his own sin. It seems obvious that he had to know what he was doing was absolutely abhorrent in God’s sight, that even as king he was not above the Law. But, he was willfully blinding himself to what he had caused to be done. He was willfully plugging his ears lest he hear his own conscience telling him how evilly he had acted. But, the mercy of God would not allow that situation to persist. No, David. You need to snap out of this. So, Nathan comes and speaks of a similar, though far lesser, crime, and David’s righteous heart burns in indignation against that crime. He can hear it in this case, as much as he cannot in his own case. But, here comes the unplugging of his ears! That man is you, David! That one whom you have just cried out for vengeance against is you. Wake up and realize what you have done, lest you die in your sins! Mercy demands that you confront yourself and repent.
Mercy demands that the sinner recognize his sin. How can he repent otherwise? Oh, he can mouth the words. He can repeat the offered prayers. He can maybe even work up some tears if that seems appropriate. I tell you (and I tell you from experience) he can sit there through the sermons for weeks on end, head up front for the altar calls, do anything and everything that seems appropriate. He will be so indistinguishable from the real believer that nobody will ever suspect that he doesn’t really believe. He will be so comfortable with this play-acting that he may not even realize he is play-acting. He certainly won’t see a need to change. Until mercy demands that he wake up! Woe be to us if we don’t manifest that mercy! Woe be to us if we don’t confront him with the full, terrible and wonderful Truth of the Gospel.
If God has granted him to know and we withhold the knowledge, who shall be held guilty before the court? We are each of us called to be watchmen upon the wall. We have the testimony of Scripture to urge us to faithfulness on our watch. If we call out warning, we have done what we could. If those we warn do nothing with that warning, the penalty is theirs to bear. But if we refuse to call out any warning and leave them to be surprised by their doom, their blood, God says, will be on our heads. We are, then, called to be watchmen, messengers of mercy, delivering the warning to those who need to come to a real repentance. We are called to wake up those who are sleeping as their destruction approaches.
That is the clear parallel. The watchmen on the walls of Israel could certainly expect a physical foe to come as the agents of that destruction. They had seen plenty come before and they would see plenty more come after. That’s why there were watchmen, after all! That there were evils arrayed against them was a given. That they ought to be on guard against those evils was likewise a given. That their complacency would lead them to ignore the cries of those they had set to this task was, sadly, a given as well. We are lethargic by nature. We prefer the comfortable present to the struggle of defense. We would gladly trade the bulk of our moral positions and our commitments to great causes for assurances that at least we will reach the end of our days before trouble comes. In Rome, this was the policy of bread and circuses. Keep the people fed and entertained on our dime, and they won’t trouble us about greater issues. They won’t even pay much attention when we have gutted our defenses and let the barbarians in.
Of course, on a more meaningful level, we battle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers and principalities. The same could be said of Israel in all her battles, even though it was the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Egyptians – name your oppressor – who stormed her gates. The issue had always been spiritual. The means of shocking God’s slumbering people into wakeful alertness did not change that.
We have been, by and large, in a period free of dire physical dangers, the Twin Towers notwithstanding. Yes, there are any number of places around the world where it is deadly to confess Christ, but not here. It may be unpleasant. It may raise a few eyebrows, lose us a few friends or acquaintances, but it is not life-threatening. Thus have we been lulled to sleep. The comfort of life in America today, where our definition of poverty would define untold riches to much of the world, has left us a nation in spiritual stupor. Outside the Church, little reason is seen to be concerned with matters of the spirit. Indeed, it is viewed as evidence of mental weakness to even think in such terms. What spirituality there is comes in the form of adventurous, entertaining dabbling. The whole new-age movement is but dabbling in the spiritual histories of others, picking up an amusing habit here, a pleasing quirk there. It’s value is no more than that of costume jewelry in comparison to the real thing.
Inside the Church, the picture really isn’t much better. Much of that which bears the name of Christianity today shares nothing more than that word with the historic faith. How else can we be having a debate over the propriety of a presidential candidate’s long time commitment to a church body whose message runs not only against sound reason, but against any vaguest understanding of the message Jesus delivered? How else can we have churches promoting the absolute antithesis of what the Bible it claims to uphold clearly addresses? How else can we have so many so-called men of the cloth who are more concerned with their opulent lifestyle than with their own soul, let alone the souls of those they finance themselves upon?
Even where there is Life in the body of the Church, where there is a real love for the real Jesus and commitment to those tenets of faith that have ever and always stood as the unifying norm for His Church; even there, spiritual sleep is overtaking the congregations. We hear the warning signs over and over, right from the pulpit! When it’s time to pray, where are you? When the opportunity has come to bring God’s Word to a people in desperate need, where are you? Oh, yes, we tithe, and we make certain to be regular in our attendance at Sunday service, maybe even Wednesdays if we’re not too busy. But, where’s the concern? Where’s the alertness of the watchman? Where’s the warning cried to those whose lives are in mortal danger?
So, the world is lost. What has that to do with me? I’ve got my ticket out of here! This is the somnolent mindset of the bulk of Christians today. We have fallen for the insistent demand of unbelievers that we keep our faith to ourselves. We have accepted that Truth has no place in the workplace, no place in the government, no place outside the walls of the Church and maybe our homes. And, even our homes are barely holding on to Truth, as we welcome the world in by airwave and by wire. Do we raise even the slightest sound of warning? Do we have the least bit of care for that one next door who has yet to recognize his need for God?
Is it our doctrine that kills our incentive to truly partner with Jesus in the work of the kingdom? One of the standard issues raised against Reformed doctrine is that the foundational beliefs laid out in that doctrine remove all incentive to preach the Gospel to the lost that they might be saved. If it’s all in God’s hands, as we say, and if He has already made the call as to who makes it and who doesn’t, what’s the point? So goes the caricature of what must result from accepting a Calvinist / Augustinian view of predestination and free will. Yet, the evidence seems to indicate that those who prefer to think differently are just as apathetic when it comes to living the kingdom life. They do not seem any more prone to get out in the unbelieving world and rescue anybody. It’s not the doctrine that’s causing trouble, it’s our own apathy, another symptom of our own fallen nature.
So, we fail as the representatives of God’s mercy. Having received mercy from our Lord and King, we fail to have mercy on all these others. And, we have managed to blind ourselves to seeing it. Why, I’m not flailing anybody over what they owe me. I’ve got this forgive and forget thing down as best I can. See, God? I’m doing it. Thank You, Jesus! To such self-commendations as these, Jesus responds, “the flesh profits nothing.” We have failed to fully assess the lesson of the rich young man who came to Jesus so full of his own accomplishments. Why, yes, Rabbi, of course I have upheld all the commandments. Since I was but a child I have done this! And, what did the Rabbi reply? “Give up all you have for the poor and let your treasure be in heaven.”
We look at that encounter and we come away saying to ourselves, you know, I really need to increase my giving to the church. Maybe I should start sending some money off to this ministry or that. But, there’s a deeper issue. What we really need to hear is, “give up your comfort and your satisfaction in being counted among the saved, give all you’ve got to save the ones who aren’t in the body, yet!” Let go of your spiritual pride and reach the lost. Preach the Gospel! Let them know the mortal danger they are in. Let them know the mercy of God that has made a way for redemption! Let them know that if they will but honestly confess their sin (and of course, you will need to make them aware of their sin before they can do this) and earnestly repent of them, the God you represent is faithful to forgive them. Let them know that there is an alternative to the walking death that is their current state. Let them know that their current state truly is nothing but walking death! The life of unbelief can never be anything else.
Watchman! Awake to your duty! The enemy draws so close and yet, no word from the wall. How many will be lost because you slumber on? Don’t think yourself so secure when the day of destruction comes. There is no perhaps about your position. You were put here for such a time as this. Now, go and do what you were set here to do. You ask for purpose in your life? What greater purpose could you want? What need do you have for more feel-good books to tell you how wonderful it is to pursue your purpose. Stop reading about it and go do it! I already told you your purpose: Go and make disciples.
Don’t you dare water down the message that was entrusted to you, either! You think it displays mercy to make the God of heaven look a bit more palatable. You think maybe you should dress Him up a bit for the public. But, God never did so. He Is Who He Is and He doesn’t hide it! Yes, He is Love and His Love is great. He is also Wrathful Vengeance and His Vengeance is terrible. Yes, He is Mercy, compassionate beyond all human measure. He is also Justice, and He will not suffer His Law to be violated with impunity. Oh, indeed, God’s great desire is that all men be saved. He does not relish the punishment of sin that Justice demands. But, He is Justice, and a Just God must uphold His own Law. Justice demands that where His mercy is rejected, His vengeance must come. The whole essence of the One True and Complete God requires that all His attributes remain True and complete, and they must be so simultaneously. So, He has mercy on whom He shall have mercy. Yet, at the same time, vengeance is His and His alone. He creates some for salvation and others for destruction, as much as His desire may be that their destruction weren’t necessary. Yet, His own necessity makes it necessary.
But, how great the mercy of God that destruction is not the lot of one and all! In all earnest judgment He looks down upon the life of man on this earth and He declares with all truthfulness that there is not a single one of us and never has been a single one of us who has walked in perfect accord with all His Law. Every last one living being has transgressed that Law, and there is but one penalty afforded for that crime: death, and death eternally. Justice demands payment for our crimes. But, mercy has made a way that we might know life. The flesh profits nothing. We remain as powerless now as ever we were to comply to all that His Law demands. It’s just not in us to do it. Mercy understands. Mercy has come and experienced how terrible the pressures of sin are upon the weakness of man. And, Mercy has triumphed. He triumphed over sin, doing the impossible, living an earthly life that – unique in all history past and future – upheld the Law in perfection. And Mercy was slain on the cross, the death of God Himself given in eternal payment for an eternity of sins; sins He did not commit, but for which He took upon Himself to satisfy the demands of Justice.
All this He did on our behalf and we were still His enemies, still determined to walk in opposition to His ways! Even so, He makes available to us the benefits of His own actions. Our great High Priest, knowing with intimate knowledge how impossible our situation, offers His own compliance and His own sacrifice to atone for our every failing. Yes, and He sees to it Himself that we who were created for glory learn of our situation, learn of what He has done, and come running to Him – even as those pushed from behind, pricked by the goad of the Spirit – to receive the benefit of His gift to us! And what does He require from us in return for this immeasurable gift? What thanks does He ask? “Go and make disciples.” Let the ones who haven’t come know. Be agents of that same Spirit Who impelled you to Me. Preach the message John preached. “Repent, the kingdom is near. Repent, the kingdom is here.” Show them the mercy that has been shown you. Your incredible debt to Me has been remitted and you are set at liberty. Don’t you dare let your brother continue in chains because he hasn’t heard how you were freed! Don’t you dare cheat him with a message of cheap grace. There’s no mercy in fooling him into a false salvation. Make sure he’s apprised of the real issues and brought to the real Jesus. Don’t leave him room to accept any substitute.
The fallout that comes of failing to present the real Jesus and of failing to make disciples rather than just taking names and shouting hallelujah one time is terrible. We need look no farther than Judas to see the danger; in particular, he stands as a proof that the moment of apparent conversion is no proof at all. Consider that Judas traveled with Jesus and the other disciples for the better part of three years. They listened to the sermons together. They discussed them together. They did the work of ministry together. They ate together. They lived together. In every outward appearance he seemed to be of one accord with them. Even on this occasion, with that “and yet one of you is a devil” ringing in their ears, there was nothing about Judas by which they could spot him as the one Jesus meant. Even at their last meal with Jesus, when the full depth of his sins was declared in their hearing, they could not know who Jesus was talking about. “It isn’t me, is it? Who among us could do such a thing, Jesus?”
That He spoke truly, this they were certain of. But, how it could be true, it was just unfathomable. They knew each other so well! Do you notice that nobody there tries pointing to one of the others? Why do you suppose that is? I grant you that they had been with Jesus long enough to be trained to discover their own sins before worrying about everybody else’s. But, I think there is another dynamic at play here. They knew each other too well, or so they thought, to suspect anybody else in that group. They were close, these twelve. They had seen each other’s development, seen what seemed like incontrovertible evidence of their faith. In the end, it was impossible for them to believe that anybody else in that room could betray Jesus, and so, they had to suppose they were the one.
Does that seem improbable? It shouldn’t. I can think of any number of occasions where a believer that I considered advanced far beyond my own progress has revealed that they think much the same about me. This really shouldn’t surprise us all that much. You see, I am the only one I really know. Quite frankly, in earthly terms, I am the only one who really knows me. If indeed I have been trying to pursue the way of the Master, of course my self-assessment is going to be the worst. If indeed this one I encounter has likewise been seeking to manifest Christ, of course what I see of him will appear better than what he sees of himself. We see only the outward appearance in any other man. Only God sees the heart. Frankly, we don’t even see our own heart all that clearly, but we do see it. God makes sure of it. “See if there be any wicked way in me, O God. And if so, make it known to me.” And there is a prayer He is surely faithful to answer! Even if we refuse to pray it.
So it was with the twelve. It would be perfectly natural that each man there would think himself the least of the bunch. Any other assessment would only reflect the sin of pride still in dominant. At the point we witness here, I don’t know if even Judas knew who Jesus meant. He may not yet have been conscious of his true status. I don’t think he was even that conscious of his true status as he went through with his plan of betrayal. At some level, yes, but the mind of man is wonderfully adept at blinding itself to what it wishes not to see. No, he would continue as one of the twelve right up to the last minute, never suspected and possibly never suspecting. There would be nothing about him to mark him out as an imposter, nothing visible to the eyes of man, anyway. But, he was never among the elect – chosen, but not unto salvation.
I know that this is a thought that causes many to bristle. Of course he had a choice, they will insist. I would contend that this is absolutely untrue. His role had been prophesied, and prophecy comes by the word of God. God being sovereign and all-powerful, would not suffer His word to be made a lie, for He is Truth. No, the play had advanced too far for the actors to reject their assigned roles. That is not to say that these twelve were automatons, pawns moved about with no will of their own. Not at all! Each of these men had made a choice, and made it without coercion. They were so constructed that it while they could have chosen differently it is impossible that they would. They went gladly down the paths assigned to them.
I am returned, of course, to the subject of free will. It seems one of those matters that I feel certain of and yet feel absolutely unfit to state with the clarity it needs. I don’t want to wind up at that “it’s a mystery” exit clause, but truth be told, there are bound to be things in the wisdom of God that, because He chooses not to reveal it fully, must remain a mystery to us. If I had the time and the inclination, I could take a side road in my studies and review what better minds have said on the topic, but frankly, it’s settled in me, unless God chooses to unsettle once again some day.
What remains to discuss here is the matter of repentance which I included in the head for this section of my study. Repentance is not something that is visible on the surface of this passage, yet it is there. It is there in all that Jesus teaches. It has to be. That is the core of His message: repent! The kingdom is breaking through all around you and if you would enter that kingdom, there is a necessary precondition. You must repent of your sins and come to Me. How can He forgive what we will not admit to? What good is paying the fine if we just run out of the court room and do the same thing all over again? Oh, I know. Far too often we do just that, even when the repentance is real. Yes, the flesh is weak. That’s a given. But, there is a world of difference between the one who has come in true repentance, with a heart broken over what he has done and the one who comes before the judge only by force. The one has thrown himself on the mercy of the court, turning himself in before the court has sent for him. The other is merely present for sentencing.
Hearing news of what Judas would do, we cannot help but think forward not only that act, but also to Peter’s terrible denial. Perhaps we must include the whole upshot of Gethsemene and the post-crucifixion actions of the eleven in our thinking. Every last one of them abandoned Jesus and in one degree or another abandoned hope. Every last one of them, seeing the Master dead and battered, so thoroughly abandoned, humiliated and broken, had come to the conclusion that they had just wasted three years pursuing a false dream. They were so sure they had heard God, so sure they had been pursuing His call on their lives and now this. What fools they had been! The only thing they could think to do was to go back to their private lives and pick up the pieces, hoping to live down the memory of this time they had wasted.
They were not that different, these eleven from Judas. But, the differences are critical. Judas, of course, takes the decisive action that brought on the whole crisis the others would face and fail. Oh, he had his moral cover, as he thought it. He was doing the right thing. Even when he realized just how terribly wrong he had been, he would try to assuage his guilt by rejecting the payment his betrayal had earned for him. But, it didn’t work, did it? He had been too close to God for too long to believe his own lies for long. He may not have been chosen, but he had been taught. He may not have accepted the Truth so as to commit his life to it, but he could not deny the Truth, either. We are told that he came to the realization that he had betrayed an innocent man. I think he realized far more than that. He had to know – and with absolute certainty – that the man he had betrayed truly was the Son of God. It wasn’t just the Roman soldier who was forced to acknowledge this.
Look, Judas was a hard enough man that if he had only thought it was a nice guy he had done in, he could have lived with that. If that was the height of his crime, he would hardly have been driven to destroy his own life by the news. No, I think he was perfectly well aware of whose death he had brought about, and I think he knew the impossibility of restoration on his own part. It is not that the enormity of his crime precluded God’s forgiveness. It is that salvation had not been granted, and as these events played out, I think that became clear to him. He was one who did not believe, did not trust. He couldn’t. The door was closed to him. Yet, he knew the glories that lay behind that door. He knew the miseries that awaited him as one who would not go through it. And that was simply to much to be borne.
Peter, though his crimes were not, as we would measure them, of such enormity, would still suffer many of the same thoughts as Judas did. He would think it just as impossible that there could be forgiveness for his failure. He had been warned, after all; warned so clearly! “Peter, you will do this thing.” Whatever happened to forewarned is forearmed? How could he have been so weak, so stupid? Oh, and now his beloved Teacher is dead. Who could he turn to for comfort? The other disciples? Why, what they must think of him. Surely they would have heard of his failings, and they would be mourning their loss as much as he. No, he could not imagine any comfort coming from that direction. Yet, in the end, his decision on that occasion seems to have been much like what we hear him saying on this occasion. “Who else could I go to?”
Both Judas and Peter were quick to recognize the horror of what they had done. Both descended into hopelessness in response to that recognition. But Peter alone came to repentance. Judas fell through hopelessness into utter, irrevocable despair and that despair drove him to take his own life. Peter, being true in his belief in spite of his failure, entered that hopelessness, but took a turn back toward life. His heart and soul still cried out, “You have the words of eternal life! What can I do but keep going?” Well, he didn’t know where to go, but he knew what to do. I think I can say with some degree of certainty that he had repented, and repented in a very real way, of his being ashamed of Jesus long before we find him reconciled on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. I think he had gone through that period of repentance before he even returned to the upper room to rejoin the others. If that is the case, then I know with absolute certainty that he had also been forgiven. Whether he felt it or not is a different matter.
No, forgiveness had been there the instant he repented. That is the faithful promise of our Faithful High Priest. But, that same Faithful High Priest could see that Peter still suffered because he could not yet bring himself to believe he had been forgiven so readily. After all, he could hardly forgive himself! He hadn’t forgiven himself. He had thrown himself into his work to keep his mind off of it, but his mind wouldn’t be kept. He worried on it, dwelt on it, and it was damaging him. So, that Faithful High Priest, who had come to experience our weakness that His compassion towards us might be perfected by understanding, had compassion on Peter. He came personally to talk to Peter, to make certain that Peter knew that forgiveness was his. He came to make certain that Peter also knew that he was not only forgiven, but he was still a man with a purpose. “Go feed My sheep.” You are not only forgiven, Peter. You are still one of My most trusted servants. You have not so sullied your office that you need to resign. No, My forgiveness has already taken care of that. It’s behind you, forgotten. Now, you need to forget it, as well, and move on. Your repentance was real and so is My forgiveness. No, be fruitful and multiply My flocks.
That is the sum. The flesh has failed, but the Spirit of the Living God has prevailed. Mercy has triumphed over sin and death. The Risen Savior is alive and well and still fully in control of His Church and every member of it. He is not unaware of our failings, nor is He stymied by them. He is not unaware of those who only pretend to membership in His body. No, the tares will be taken out in due time. In but a few days’ time we will celebrate once more the evidence of His total victory over sin and death. He Who descended from heaven gave visible proof of His return thence, and He gave proof that He did so having utterly defeated the powers of death. Death could not hold Him, but He now held the keys to the prisons of sin and death.
We continue to be left in this world, but not as orphans. We continue to be left in this world, yet our citizenship is in heaven. We continue to face the battles, but the victory has already been won. We, more than the many who died waiting for His advent, have every reason to hold and proclaim, “though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Oh, yes, come Sunday, we will surely rejoice and shout out that He is risen indeed. But, at root, we rejoice and shout because we know His resurrection is the assurance of our own. We may go to the grave, but we shall not remain there. We may suffer in this life, in fact we can pretty much count on it, but we measure the weight of these years of suffering and set them in the balance against an eternity of glory, and those sufferings are as nothing. Oh, we shall feel them well enough. We cannot deny the pain of suffering, but despair is far from us, for He is risen indeed!
